A look at sports pages during the past year reveals that the seemingly endless
argument between the owners of major league baseball teams and their players
is once more taking attention away from the game on the field. At the heart
of the trouble between players and management is the fact that baseball, by
fiat of antitrust exemption, is a monopolistic, monopsonistic cartel, whose
leaders want to operate in the style of Gilded Age magnates.13
This desire is easily understood, when one considers that the business of major
league baseball assumed its current structure in the 1880's--the heart of the
robber baron era. Professional baseball as we know it today began with the formation
of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs in 1876. The National
League (NL) was a departure from the professional organization which had existed
previously: the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. The
main difference between the leagues can be discerned by their full titles; where
the National Association considered itself to be by and for the players, the
NL was a league of ball club owners, to whom the players were only employees.
The player workers of major league baseball have ever since been treated as
less than equal by the people who pay them. 14

For nearly all of its 125 year history, professional baseball has featured the
characteristic of a struggle between capitalists in the form of club owners
and laborers in the person of the players. This is not to assert that baseball
is best captured within a simple Marxian framework; on the contrary, the labor-management
dynamic in baseball is more complex than that, for in baseball the labor force
is the means of production. A game (the ultimate product) could not occur without
the players. 15 However, from 1879 until 1976, baseball owners
possessed total control of the product as they were able to exclusively control
the players through the "reserve rule". This practice began as a gentleman's
agreement between clubs, wherein each club would reserve the services of five
of its top players, and all other League clubs agreed not to bid for those player's
services. 16 By 1887, reservation
had increased to include virtually all of a club's players, and every professional
baseball contract stated that if the club tendered a contract to one of its
players and the player did not accept it, "...the club shall have the right
to renew this contract for a period of one year."17
Until 1975, owners and players alike considered this clause to ensure a club's
rights to a player in perpetuity. As former Major League Baseball Player's Association
head Marvin Miller writes, "management had always said...that this right
of renewal had no limit. Simply stated, the claim was that a club had the right
to renew a player's contract forever . The only alternative a player had to
complying was to quit playing baseball for a living."18

Economists later discovered what baseball's Gilded Age owners instinctively
knew: that the reserve rule restricted player movement (employment) as well
as artificially depressed salaries. 19
It did so by eliminating the chance for players to sell their services to other
employers. Before the reserve rule, "revolving" (players leaving one
club for another in the middle of a season) was a common occurrence. This was
disturbing to spectators (who did not know with certainty that a given player
would be on the team they paid to see) as well as to the owners, who were not
comfortable with the idea of bargaining with players over salaries. This became
an issue because revolving players often wound up back where they started, but
for greater remuneration. 20 The reserve rule enabled management to have
completely unilateral control over team rosters and salaries. Only through retirement
or injury could a player remove himself from a team, and even then he was unable
to sign with another club unless his previous employer released him from his
contract. By prohibiting the player from bargaining with other clubs for a contract,
salary negotiation was a simple matter: either the player accepted the club's
offer or he did not play. This led to artificially low salaries for ballplayers
and increased profits for owners.

In the 1880's, major league baseball primarily consisted of two eight team leagues:
the National League and the American Association (AA). 21
During the decade the NL had clubs in Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis,
Kansas City, New York, Philadelphia, Providence, St. Louis, Troy, Washington
and Worcester; the AA operated out of Baltimore, Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Cleveland,
Columbus, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Louisville, Philadelphia, Richmond, St.
Louis, Toledo and Washington. 22
Those twenty-one cities were the sole possessors of major league baseball. The
term "major league" sprang from the loftily titled "National
Agreement" of 1883, in which the National League and the American Association
declared their clubs to be major league teams, and each promised to respect
the other's reserve rights. This agreement ensured a substantial market for
major league clubs by guaranteeing them exclusive rights within their leagues
to geographic location. It established a maximum salary of $2000 and it also
made the reserve rule a mandatory part of each player's contract. For those
players who refused to go along with the reserve, a blacklist was also established
by the National Agreement. 23
The National Agreement was a compact written by and for the owners. The potential
impact upon players of the only two major leagues being united behind a pledge
to reserve the players (and thereby limit their mobility and income) was immense.

At this time,John
Montgomery Ward embarked upon the process which would secure him his place
in baseball history. Born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania in 1860, Ward
was a certified baseball star, who began his career in 1878 with Providence
(R.I) of the National League. Ward
started out as a pitcher, and in his second year put together a record of 47-17,
leading the NL in victories and his team to the World's Championship. In 1880,
he pitched the second perfect game in major league history, just five days after
John Lee Richmond of Worcester pitched the first. Arm trouble turned him into
a part time pitcher for the next few seasons, and by 1885, while playing for
the New York National League club, Ward
became a full-time shortstop. 24
Concurrent with his ballplaying, Ward
was also attending Columbia University and earned both bachelor's and law degrees
from that institution. In 1885 Ward
and eight other members of the New York Giants formed the Brotherhood of Professional
Base Ball Players, and Ward was elected president. The Brotherhood's purpose,
as stated in its charter (penned by Ward)
was "to protect and benefit its members collectively and individually,
to promote a high standard of professional conduct, and to advance the interests
of the National Game"25
By the beginning of the 1887 season, the Brotherhood had 107 National League
and American Association players on its membership rolls, and had chapters organized
in every major league city. While they had not yet flexed their muscles against
the owners, it is certain that they had organized themselves for protective
purposes. 26

However, the reserve rule was not the primary reason for the organization of
the Brotherhood. Neither the Brotherhood nor Ward
immediately voiced disapproval with the reserve rule. The Brotherhood did press
the owners to incorporate the rule into player contracts, thus elevating it
to a legal point rather than a mere gentleman's agreement between magnates,
but they did not express any animosity towards the rule. As late as 1888, in
his book Baseball: How To Become A Player (the first how-to book written
by a major league player), Ward
described the rule as, "the most important feature of the National Agreement"
and the thing to which "baseball as a business owe[s] its present substantial
standing." Ward
acknowledged his inability to conceive of an alternative to the reserve rule
thus: "The reserve rule is itself a usurpation of the player's rights,
but it is, perhaps, made necessary by the peculiar nature of the baseball business,
and the player is indirectly compensated by the improved standing of the game."27

Ward
was clearly of two minds on this subject, however. Shortly before the publication
of his book, he wrote an article for Lippincott's Magazine entitled "Is
The Base Ball Player A Chattel?" The article was inspired by the practice
of what was known at the time as the "sales system", and continues
today whenever a player is "sold" to another ball club. In the 1880's,
clubs began selling players to other clubs for high sums of money, most notably
when Chicago of the National League sold Mike
"King" Kelly (one of the premier players of his day) to Boston
of the National League for $10,000. Kelly
(and other ball players) asked for a percentage of the gross proceeds, but was
denied any remuneration. Ward's
article clearly lays out the basis of the players' complaint: the buying
club was not just retaining the player's services for the remainder of his contract,
but was buying the right to reserve or sell him again. Ward
summed up his argument by citing the Kelly
case, "Kelly
received his salary from Chicago and earned every dollar of it several times
over, and yet the Chicago Club takes ten thousand dollars for releasing Kelly
from a claim for which it never paid him a dollar, but which it acquired by
seizure some years ago."28

Ward's
article, while not calling for an end to the reserve rule, did catch the
temper of the times among many top ball players. 29
Many felt, as did Ward,
that "[E]very dollar received by the club in [a sale] is taken from the
pocket of the player; for if the buying club could afford to pay that sum as
a bonus, it could just as well have paid it to the player in the form of increased
salary. The whole thing is a conspiracy, pure and simple, on the part of the
clubs, by which they are making money rightfully belonging to the players."30

Ward
put his ideals into practice in 1889. When he received word that the New York
Giants were seeking to sell him, either to Washington or Boston of the NL for
the record price of $12,000 (approximately double his salary) , Ward
made it known that he would refuse to play unless, "the release money,
$12,000 would be divided equally. He hardly thought it fair that the New York
Club should dispose of him without his receiving a share of the money paid."31 Ultimately, the sale did not take place, due
in large part to club owners refusal to pay Ward
half of the sale price. A case similar to Ward's was that of "Deacon"
White a veteran infielder who was sold from the Detroit Wolverines of the
NL to Pittsburgh of the NL. White refused to go, saying "No man can sell
my carcass unless I get half" and became an investor in a group which sought
to bring National League baseball back to Buffalo, where he hoped to be a playing
manager. 32 When informed of White's plans, his former owner,
Frederick K. Stearns of the Detroit club declared, "White may have been
elected president of the Buffalo club or President of the United States, but
that won't enable him to play ball in Buffalo. He'll play in Pittsburgh or he'll
get off the earth!"33 White wound up sitting out
half of the 1889 season in protestbefore finally reporting to Pittsburgh.

Ward's
and the other players' ambivalence regarding the reserve rule and the indirect
compensation the players received by securing the investments of the owners
came to an end in 1889 with the advent of the Brush Classification Plan. As
mentioned above, the classification plan was the motivating force which led
the players to embark on an endeavor the scope of which is nearly impossible
to imagine occurring today: the formation of their own league.

The key person in the Brotherhood's plans was Albert L. Johnson, a Cleveland
trolley-car entrepreneur, brother of Cleveland's mayor Tom L. Johnson, and an
ardent baseball fan. Johnson was willing to put up seed money to start the new
league, as well as help recruit ballplayers as they came through Cleveland,
and he was also an effective conduit for seeking out other men willing to be
backers of the new circuit. Johnson's other brother and partner in the street
railway business, Will Johnson, summed up the brother's thoughts thus:

Besides furnishing the best ball in the country, the players will have the sympathy
of the people with them. No man living that I know of feels friendly to the way the
League bosses have been running things. This selling and trading of players as though
they were so much cattle is all wrong and the time has come when the players must
take the bull by the horns and do something for themselves. 34

A more selfish reason is that the Johnson brothers knew that a new baseball league
would necessitate new ball parks, which to be successful would require streetcar
lines, and the visions of large profits surely danced before their eyes as much as
those of downtrodden ballplayers.35

By the end of the summer of 1889, the organization of what would become the Players'
National League was nearly complete. In a prodigious feat of solidarity and stealth,
the players were able to keep their plans a virtual secret. The first mention of
the new venture in the national sporting press was not until September, by which
time, backers and personnel for the new league had been secured. In addition to the
Johnsons, other backers of the Players' League included: Edward Talcott, the superintendent
of the Illinois Military Academy; Cornelius Van Cott, the postmaster of New York
and former New York state senator; Edwin McAlpin, prominent New York Republican and
a tobacco manufacturer; Wendell Goodwin, a noted realtor and John Addison, a wealthy
Chicago contractor. 36

But the most noteworthy feature of the new league was its structure. The league was
to be run on a co-operative basis, with each club governed by a board made up of
an equal number of players and backers. there was to be a League Senate constituted
on a similar basis, and profits were to be shared out between players and backers.
37 Furthermore, there was no
reserve clause or classification: players signed three year contracts at either their
1889 or 1888 salary, whichever was higher. Many players bought stock in their clubs,
a practice forbidden in the National League, where they were viewed as mere commodities.
38

In October, the members of the Brotherhood, over one hundred men strong, virtually
the entire National League roster, took the unprecedented step of refusing to sign
contracts for 1890. A month later, on November 4, 1889, at a meeting in New York,
the players issued a "Manifesto" penned by John
Ward, declaring their intentions to "play next season under different management."
The following passage gives a sense of the issues promulgated by the players, and
of the feelings which motivated them in their actions:

...There was a time when the League stood for integrity and fair dealing. Today
it stands for dollars and cents. Once it looked to the elevation of the game and
an honest exhibition of the sport; to-day its eyes are upon the turnstile. Men have
come into the business for no other motive than to exploit it for every dollar in
sight. Measures originally intended for the good of the game have been perverted
into instruments for wrong. The reserve rule and the provisions of the National Agreement
gave the managers unlimited power, and they have not hesitated to use this in the
most arbitrary and mercenary way.

Players have been bought and sold as though they were sheep instead of American citizens.
"Reservation" for them became for them another name for property right
in the player. By a combination among themselves, stronger than the strongest trust,
they were able to enforce the most arbitrary measures, and the player had either
to submit or get out of the profession in which he had spent years in attaining a
proficiency...We believe it is possible to conduct our national game upon lines which
will not infringe upon individual and natural rights. We ask to be judged solely
by our business conducted more intelligently under a plan which excludes everything
arbitrary and un-American, we look forward with confidence to the support of the
public and the future of the national game. 39

The members of the Brotherhood did not see themselves as mere employees nor
did they perceive themselves as men of inferior background. The most prominent
owner in the National League, Albert
G. Spalding, got his start as a pitcher, which helped him finance the sporting
goods empire upon which his fortune was based. Many players in the Brotherhood
were property owners, and saw no great separation between themselves and the
self-styled "magnates" who owned their contracts.40Tim
Keefe, a leading pitcher of the day, Secretary of the Brotherhood and Ward's
brother-in-law, sought to follow Spalding's footsteps, forming a sporting
goods house (Keefe
and Becannon's) which was the official supplier of Players' League balls and
uniforms.

The players of the Brotherhood realized their importance as the supplier of the product
known as baseball, and felt that they could be treated better as partners than as
mere employees. When Ward
later said that the trouble between players and National League management would
end, "if they could only get over the idea that they own us", he was expressing
his desire to be treated as a skilled laborer and professional, with the rights,
and respect due to such a person.

Notes

12. New York Clipper , August 30, 1890.

13. The major leagues are a monopoly in that they are the only source
of "major league" quality baseball. They are also a monopsony, in the way
they relate to the players. A monopsony is best described as a "buyer's monopoly".
Basically, in baseball, the number of potential buyers of a player's services have
always been limited artificially, for years through reservation and in recent years
by collective bargaining rules which make players property of just one club for up
to ten years, including minor league service. This prevents players from getting
full market value for their labor.

14. Historian Warren Goldstein writes, "In point of fact,
the two organizations were more alike than has been supposed. Players did not
run the first professional organization."Playing For Keeps: A History of Early Baseball (Ithaca: Cornell)
1989, p. 135. However, most historians, including Goldstein do acknowledge that
the National Association was not run on good business principles, and players
had an infinitely greater degree of autonomy in the National Association than
in the National League.

15. This was proven in 1995 by Major League Baseball's plan to break
the 1994-95 strike by the use of "replacement players". The hiring of scab
workers was the only means by which the owners could supply the public with games,
until the strike ended on April 1. It has been asked whether the players are the
only indispensable feature of the production of baseball games. What about the stadiums,
for instance? To this writer, ballparks are not equivalent to factories where workers
produce the games. Instead, they are a location where the product is consumed (and
many more people "attend" games by radio and television that physically
go to the location where the game is played). While stadiums are vitally important,
the players are by definition the sole means of producing a baseball game.

18 Marvin
Miller, A Whole Different Ballgame: The Sport and Business of Baseball
(New York:Birch Lane Press) 1991, pp. 238-239. The reserve rule was declared
void by arbitrator Peter Seitz in his landmark Messersmith-McNally decision.
When Seitz declared the reserve clause non-binding after the period of one year,
players and management began to operate under a series of collectively bargained
"Basic Agreements". It is since this time that the players have had
some control over the terms and conditions of their employment. While good for
the players, this development has led to bitterness on the part of ownership,
who greatly preferred the previous system. For more on this topic, see Ethan
M. Lewis Changing The Rules of The Game: The Role of Arbitration in Labor-Management
Relations in Major League Baseball (Hampshire
College Division Three Thesis) 1992.

19. The first study of this was in Simon Rottenberg, "The
Baseball Player's Labor Market", Journal of Political Economy 64
(June, 1956): 242-258. Other good sources include James Dworkin, Owners Versus
Players (Boston: Auburn Hill) 1980, and Gerald
Scully, The Business of Major League Baseball .

21. The major leagues were very unstable at this time, and franchise
shifts occurred frequently. The two dominant leagues were briefly challenged during
the 1884 season by a St. Louis millionaire named Henry Lucas. Lucas started a third
major league, known as the Union Association (UA). The UA failed to lure away enough
star players to compete with the established leagues, but was not successful, and
the venture folded after just one season.

25.Ward, Baseball: How To Become a Player p. 32. Tim Keefe
"The Brotherhood and It's Work" Players' National League Guide (Chicago:
W.J. Jefferson) 1890, p. 7.

26. John Montgomery Ward, "The Players' National League"
Players' National League Guide . Ward writes that the in the beginning the
Brotherhood was formed for , "mutual protection of the players." p. 3.

29. Ward commented frequently on this topic as president of the
Brotherhood of Players. He walked a fine line between opposition to the inequities
of the reserve and an inability to see an alternative. He was quoted as saying, "The
reserve rule, on the whole, is a bad one; but it cannot be rectified save by injuring
the interests of the men who invest their money, and that is not the object of the
Brotherhood."

37.
Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years p. 229. The plan was to allocate
profits in the following manner: the first $10,000 to the backers, the next
$10,000 to the players, and any further profits divided equally among all parties.

40. "Well Fixed Professionals", The Sporting News
November 24, 1888. Among Brotherhood leaders, the following were enumerated: "Johnny
Ward, of the New Yorks, has just bought a block of property in Denver; Jim [Deacon]
White owns a farm and several houses in Detroit; Hoss Radbourn owns several thousand
dollars worth of real estate at Bloomington [Ind.]; Dan Brouthers owns real estate
in Detroit and other points." Two years later, the Sporting News went on to
say that these players were so well off because they were "a superior set of
men, with the ability to take care of, as well as earn the money" "Caught
on the Fly" The Sporting News July 5, 1890.